Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Japan Sweets Review

Those who know me know I have a love for Japan. Feudal Japan is of greater interest to me than present-day Japan, but I will admit that I am still pleasantly surprised by the mixture of tradition and modernism that is currently co-existing there. Even in Tokyo! But despite the greenery, the brutally honourable ancient lifestyle and the traditional music that firmly captured my heart a few years ago, I do love the bright colours and crazy designs of modern Japanese culture. I watch a few anime, though they are the mainstream ones - Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z when I was younger and am revisiting now, and Bleach and Naruto/Naruto Shippuden now (the latter is easily and unexpectedly my favourite of all - when Seeg suggested I try it, I was against it. "Why does the kid have whiskers, for god's sake?" I said. "Is he some kind of animal, or something?" Well, now I know).

I also love the green tea obsession; just about everything is available in green tea flavour, which is baffling to me! But interesting nevertheless. And as some of you know, when I began this month's workout - Shaolin Warrior (yes, I know that Chinese and Japanese are very different things) - I also started drinking matcha tea powder grown in Nishio, Japan. So I'm a little more focused on Asia right now, but I promise this isn't an intentional theme.

I've tried Japanese sweets before, and there's one thing I have to say about them: they're different. A good kind of different. The watapachi candy floss with popping candy brings out the child in me, and puccho sweets do too, because they're unlike anything we have here in England. If we had all this over here I'd have been a fat child instead of just a fat teenager. I also love Meiji Hello Pandas, because they remind me of some kind of alien biscuits that were virtually the same thing that I had when I was a kid, but for the life of me I can't remember what they're called. Which is why I have 3 boxes and 2 small bags of them.

JapanSweetsNom.com isn't the first Japanese sweet shop I've found in the UK, but they do have the upper hand. As I mentioned before, I am a fan of certain animes - and I am very, very fussy about them - and Pokemon was my first love when I was 8 years old. I bought a 3DS last year just to play Pokemon (I bought a refurbished display model, so I saved £100 without compromising on performance, and Seeg then spent days trying to get me a shiny Skrelp in Pokemon X/Y because I love leafy sea dragons).

I've not seen anime-themed sweets before, and that's where Japan Sweets has the upper hand. Look at this stuff! I'm a hoarder, I keep wrappers because I'm an idiot, and you can guarantee I'm keeping this stuff!! It's so cool! I got a few Super Mario Bros. things, too and I'm keeping those wrappers as well.

So, as you can see, this place has unique stuff, including sweets of One Piece and Attack on Titan - two huge animes that I've never seen. Seeg's best friends back in the Netherlands love both of those animes, so you can bet that I'll be buying them a few pieces - I've not met one of them yet because he was living in the US when I came over, and he and I managed to have a few clashes in the past despite that fact, so I'm hoping to win him over a little!

But they also have the more expected and better known pieces like Meiji Hello Pandas and Pocky sticks. The thing is, while other Japanese sweet shops seem to stock whatever they can get their hands on, JapanSweetsNom.com seem to go out of their way to find limited edition and awesome stuff, like these themed pieces, which I've seen nowhere else. I'd be over the moon if they got the Dragon Ball Z sodas! Yet more wrappers to keep!

Hello Panda and Panda Pocky

It does have to be said that the Japanese are clever and efficient. The tiny little box of chewing gum - blue, cube-shaped, soda-flavoured chewing gum - shown below has a tiny little pocket on the front beneath the lid which contains what I initially thought were post-it notes, which I thought was odd, but I realised shortly after that they're small pieces of paper to wrap your gum in, and there are exactly 10 sheets for the 10 pieces of gum. Uh, all right, that's pretty flipping awesome. Cube gum, Pikachu and a tiny pocket with papers for disposal. I also love the different pokemon sillhouettes on the Pokemon monster ball sweets - I've guessed most of them right so far, because I'm cool like that.
Then there are the pieces with free little gifts, like the Mario hi chew with a free little stamp! I love this! I know we have Kinder Eggs, but I've never liked them - the chocolate is foul (and yet the little maxi bars are amazing) and the 'toys' are always so very disappointing! But I really, really liked this, it feels like you get more for your money beyond a smattering of chocolate and a small jigsaw puzzle.
But there's more grown-up stuff, like the Melty Kiss chocolates which are gorgeous, and more familiar things like Kit Kats - except they're green tea Kit Kats or bakeable pudding flavour Kit Kats. Seriously, it's awesome, and the green tea ones are surprisingly good! So there are things for all tastes! Be it ridiculous, sweet, sour and colourful, or chocolatey, biscuity, slightly-more-grown-up-ful.

Not only is the shop itself great and fresh, but they're such lovely people! I've been speaking with them on twitter and they're so friendly and so real - being an Etsy seller I admit I've taken friendly sellers a little bit for granted, but when you find someone selling on their own website but are still real and down to earth, well that's just brilliant, and it's very encouraging to come back to. I'd also usually be afraid to ask a shop if they're likely to stock such-and-such a product, but in this case I really, really do feel like asking them if they could get ahold of something in particular wouldn't be rude or an inconvenience (yes, I know, but I'm English, as far as we're concerned just looking at another person is an inconvenience).

And also, it needs to be said: the website is easy to navigate, but more importantly the postage prices are brilliant. All this stuff cost £3.94 to ship within the UK, and just a couple of pieces would only be about 75p - another very, very encouraging factor to return to. Their website is cute and the service is wonderful. I cannot fault them in the slightest, even if I wanted to. Rest assured, you lovely people, you've won me over from other websites, and that's something I can say whole-heartedly, too.

Aaaaand because I have so much, I'm willing to share! ...Though reluctantly. Very reluctantly.
Enter using rafflecopter below and you can win a box of Meiji Hello Pandas, Karipori Pokemon candy sticks, Super Mario Bros. U Candy with a free pack of stickers, and a Kajiriccho Grape stick. It's not much, but there's only so much you can expect from someone with a box full of sweets! The more I have the more selfish I get.
The giveaway is open worldwide until the 20th of September, and shipping is entirely my own responsibility. As usual, due to negative personal experiences, I won't be publicly announcing the winner, though I will be announcing right here when a winner has been chosen and has accepted the prize.

Rules: the giveaway is open worldwide, and the winner is chosen at random. The winner will be contacted via the email addressed used to access the widget and will have 72 hours (3 days) to respond. If they do not respond within 72 hours, a new winner will be chosen and the original winner notified that it is too late to claim the prize. The new winner will have another 72 hours to respond. The prize cannot be changed, sod off, they're my sweets; all decisions are mine and all decisions are final.

I do read every single comment, and I will try to respond where I can. If you have an important question about my blog or my shop, however, then you might be better off contacting me directly by email. Thanks so much for reading my blog!